IT WEB Brazil, November 10, 2011

"Fraud is constantly evolving. While we create new products, fraudsters work very hard to improve their skills in generating threats, whether through the internet or the real world". The statement was made by Eldred Garcia, senior vice president of business development and strategic partnerships of Accertify to Latin America, in an exclusive interview with IT Web.

In the executive's opinion, when it comes to e-commerce and other online threats involving theft of money, there is a clear separation of virtual and physical worlds: the effect is clear and direct in what we call the real world. "Fraud does not detect this difference. What it does is constantly migrating to the area of least resistance. Wherever there is less resistance and less protection, that's where it goes", he analyzed.

As much as the security online has increased and users get more accustomed to internet purchasing, online fraud is something that raises concerns among companies. A recent survey conducted by CyberSource found that about 70% of the analyzed companies mentioned that they need to protect the brand as the first step to tighten the control of hackers and other security risks involving payments.

The laboratory SpiderLabs of Trustwave, showed in a recent survey that at least one point of threat or vulnerability exists in 85% of corporate systems or payment. Over two thousand penetration tests were made in about 220 companies from 15 countries. The study concludes that among the systems that are vulnerable, 90% reported actual incidents, such as stealing passwords or sensitive data. The research shows that not only the lack of protection systems are increasingly structured and specialized in new technologies, but also criminals with the purpose of defrauding companies.

"Traditionally, there are a lot of time and investment in research to protect the physical world, and with the growing e-commerce, fraudsters have the opportunity to create more fraud activities, especially since there are not so many security features in the virtual world. An example of weakness is the environment of credit card online, "he said.

SpiderLabs also showed that the theft of confidential payment card represents the largest proportion of cases of attack, with 75% of fraud. Following vulnerabilities appear on workstations of employees of large companies - which account for 11% of all cases discovered - and the e-commerce - with 9% of the attacks.

The biggest issue is that environmental protection is always one step behind cyber attacks. "The only way to act against a threat is to know it, and they are constantly evolving their process. A key to have a strategy to prevent fraud is to prevent the possibility quickly, "he added.